The fall of Catherine Howard, 1541 – Primary Sources

The account at right was written by the Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys.

Catherine was Henry VIII’s fifth wife and the cousin of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. She was perhaps only 18 years old when she caught the king’s eye; her immature and reckless behavior guaranteed a brief marriage. Though the king was besotted with her, she was understandably more attracted to men her own age.

In this account, Chapuys inaccurately uses the name ‘Dorand’ to refer to Francis Dereham. Thomas Culpepper’s position saved him from Dereham’s gruesome fate. Lady Rochford was Anne Boleyn’s former sister-in-law.

This year on 13 November Sir Thomas Wriothesley, secretary to the king, came to Hampton Court to the queen, and called all the ladies and gentlewomen and her servants into the great chamber, and there openly before them declared certain offenses she had committed in misusing her body with certain persons before the king’s time, because of which he there discharged all her household; and the morning after she was taken to Sion, with my Lady Bainton and two other gentlewomen and certain of her servants to wait on her there until the king’s further pleasure. And various people were taken to the Tower of London, such as my Lady Rochford, Master Culpepper, one of the king’s privy chamber, and others.

On 1 December Thomas Culpepper, one of the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber, and Francis Dorand, gentleman, were arraigned at the Guildhall in London, for high treason against the king’s majesty, in misdemeanor with the queen, as appeared by their indictment which they confessed to, and they were sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, the lord mayor sitting there as chief, the lord chancellor on his right hand, and the duke of Norfolk on his left hand, the duke of Suffolk, the lord privy seal, the earls of Sussex, of Hertford, and various others of the king’s council sitting with all the judges also in commission that day. And on 10 December the said Culpepper and Dorand were drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn, and there Culpepper, after exhorting the people to pray for him, stood on the ground by the gallows, knelt down and had his head struck off; and then Dorand was hanged, dismembered, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. Culpepper’s body was buried at St Sepulchre’s church near Newgate, and their heads were set on London Bridge.

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